Customer Reviews

Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People

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I thought twice about writing this review, and hesitated before finally submitting it to Amazon. If you really disliked a book, then why review it?

But the topic is just too important. Moreover, since the would-be reader is likely to expect brilliance--not to mention simple fairness in characterizing the views of people who have had the temerity to hold views that Harris rejects--from the pre-publication blurbs on the back of the book, there should be some counterweight.

The book is very short on argument: citing your previous publications is not producing an argument. (If you think that so many of the claims you make were decisively defended in your previous work, why trot them out again? If you think that they are so important that they must be adduced again, then you need to reprise your arguments, not merely assert your conclusions.) Neither is artfully choosing quotations from people who hold opposing views to make them (and anyone who does not hold Harris' views) look like idiots. Or choosing weaker expositors of those views rather than the strongest you can find.

Continuing with the theme of uncharitable interpretation: The book is as long on invective, and gratuitous rudeness as it is short on substantive argument. I do not agree with Michael Sandel's assessment of the problems with supporting genetic enhancement, and I think that his recent book on the subject does not expand or clarify the argument he made in his earlier ATLANTIC article. (I continue to think that the original article was better, in fact.) But Harris's criticism of Sandel is snide, nasty, sneering and self-congratulatory. There is SOME accuracy at the heart of the criticism: Sandel's argument is slight, to be sure. Still, Harris's points could have stated succinctly and non-viciously.

People who are interested in the topic should read Jonathan Glover's recent CHOOSING CHILDREN. Glover's views are congruent with Harris' in many of the fundamentals. But unlike Harris', Glover's treatment is clear, fair, modest, and elegant.

Anonymous (Katonah, N.Y.) on December 10, 2007 wrote: "His dismissal of the human and civil rights of those who are flawed, i.e. people with disabilities discussed in chapter 6 is perverse" etc, but he does not give a quote to prove his accusation. In fact on the first page of chapter 6 John Harris wrote:

"A thesis of this book is that all persons are equal and none are less equal than others." (p.86)

Amazingly, this is completely the opposite of what Anonymous wrote! Anonymous did not present an argument, but pure emotion.

The attitude we take toward human enhancement is one of the biggest policy choices we face in the coming years but it's one that rarely recieves any serious analysis. Harris, therefore, deserves credit not only for calling this issue to our attention but also approaching it in a rational objective fashion instead of relying on the eww factor or the emotional appeal of enhancement.

Unfortunately the book soon becomes rather repetitive. Each new chapter seems to do little than provide a new setting in which to propound his main points. These include:

1) Their is no principled distinction to be drawn between enhancement and things like vaccinations or preventative measures against cancer as both give us abilities we lack.

2) There is no principled reason to distinguish enhancement via good parenting and good schools from genetic enhancement. If we aren't willing to demand that rich parents/countries give up the permanent advantages arising from proper childhood nutrition we shouldn't treat the permanent advantages from genetic modification any differently.

3) Worries about safety and harmful side effects are reasons to proceed with caution and analyze individual proposals carefully but don't justify blanket rejection of the program of producing better humans.

Frankly the book gets boring quickly because the most visible opponents of genetic enhancement don't have an interesting responses to these points. Sandel seems to rely on confusing and vaguely worded polemics to defend what he is 'sure' must be right (and most philosophy grads I've asked can't decode a cogent argument from his stuff) and Habermas (sp?) is little better. Ultimately it seems to largely come down to the question of whether you take common negative reaction to the idea of enhancement to be decisive and only then try to build a theory around that or you take a more utilitarian/consequentialist approach and try to reach an answer from those principles. While the book does illuminate this divide there is little it can do to advance the argument after the first few chapters.

If you haven't thought of the issue much at all this book is a good prompt to thought but I don't know if I would read to the end. The only thing I got out of later chapters was a better sense of how people's reaction to this subject interfaces with government decisions in the UK but that's hardly the point of the book.

Other books on this topic which readers may find more enlightening and persuasive include MORE THAN HUMAN by Ramez Naam, CITIZEN CYBORG by James Hughes, and LIBERATION BIOLOGY by Ron Bailey.

This book is self-contradictory and self-righteous. You will learn very little from it because Harris simply calls whatever he disagrees with "wrong" and assumes that everyone shares his own value system.

Enhancing Evolution is more than just a bad book--it is proof that some medical ethics scholars have no conception, pun intended, of the real world. Harris book is elitist and caters to those who perceive themselves to be superior beings. Do not be fooled by the dust jacket that contains six over the top laudatory comments from other MDs. At heart, the book is a mean spirited justification to "improve" the human species. His dismissal of the human and civil rights of those who are flawed, i.e. people with disabilities discussed in chapter 6 is perverse and reminiscent of the Eugenics era that led to forced sterilization and institutionalization of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.